"I made mistakes as well and hopefully they forgive me for those mistakes and hopefully I did more good things than mistakes."

Hyypia retired from the game in 2011, but in May 2012 was handed the reins at Leverkusen alongside Sascha Lewandowski after a successful caretaker spell.

The pair have since guided the club to third place in the Bundesliga behind current leaders Bayern Munich and defending champions Borussia Dortmund, but Hyypia has admitted to finding management more difficult.

"As a player it's quite easy - this job is much more difficult," he added. "It's quite funny being on the other side now to see how much work you have to do with the team, outside of the team, and all the planning for the season, for pre-season, and for every training session.

"As a player you show up half an hour before training and somebody tells you what to do. Then you go to the shower and go home."

Hyypia played under Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez at Liverpool and revealed that it was the latter who taught him most as a coach.

"I haven't had a lot of managers and coaches in my career but from every one I tried to take the positive things," he said. "The negative things, I don't want to bring them into my coaching.

"If we are talking about football tactically, maybe I learned the most from Benitez. Tactically he was good and maybe I'd say I've learned the most from him."